SEO Agency for Attorneys — The 22-Question Personal-Stakes Vetting Framework

Every legal-SEO vetting framework on the SERP is written for the firm — the managing partner, the procurement committee, the chief operating officer. None of them is written for the buyer this query usually surfaces: the individual attorney looking at an agency before the firm gets involved.

That attorney is in one of four positions. Solo practitioner. Equity partner asked to bring back a recommendation. Junior partner running pre-procurement diligence. Or an attorney evaluating an agency for personal-brand work — attorney-byline content, thought leadership, AI-engine citation authority — before the firm signs anything at all. In each position, the questions that matter are not the firm-level governance questions; they're the personal-stakes questions. Whose name ends up on the engagement letter. Whose bar number is exposed when a Rule 7.1 complaint lands. Whose attorney-byline content survives a firm change. Whose book of business the agency can poach inside the metro. Whose conflict screens the intake data passes through.

This page is that framework. Below: the 22 vetting questions across five categories — bar discipline exposure (Q1–Q4), practice-level fit (Q5–Q9), personal-brand and book portability (Q10–Q13), conflict-of-interest exposure (Q14–Q17), practitioner access and accountability (Q18–Q22). For each question we publish the answer a literate, ABA-fluent vendor produces alongside the bluffing-vendor sound that should kill the conversation. Then the four personal-brand portability clauses to demand in writing, an honest read on the named vendors most attorneys evaluate (LawRank, Rankings.io, Hennessey, Scorpion, Consultwebs, Foster Web Marketing, EverSpark, Justia, On The Map, BluShark, JurisDigital, Lawmatics, Coalition Technologies, Three Stripes Digital, Everest Legal Marketing, Majux), how Rule27 answers each of the 22 questions, and three anonymized AZ attorneys who used this framework before signing.

We operate in Arizona ER 7.1–7.5 every day. AZ's rule set is comparatively clean — clearer than Florida, less restrictive than New York — but the state-bar inquiry layer for attorney-byline content is still the load-bearing risk for the individual attorney. Discipline lives with the named attorney, not the firm. A Rule 7.1 violation on a homepage triggers a firm-level inquiry; a Rule 7.1 violation on a page you authored or are quoted on names you individually.

We've inherited recovery work from three Arizona attorneys in the last 18 months who walked into an SEO engagement on the firm's procurement and discovered, after-the-fact, that their personal name was on the engagement letter, their attorney-byline content was firm-owned with no portability clause, and their bio-page schema disambiguation had been built around the firm's domain rather than the attorney's bar admission. None of those facts caused harm at the time of signing. All three caused harm later — at firm transition for two of them, at a State Bar inquiry for the third.

This page is the document we wish each of those attorneys had had open during the firm's procurement weeks. If you're in Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert, or anywhere else in Arizona, the AZ ER 7.1–7.5 layer is in our daily operating posture. If you're admitted out-of-state, the framework still holds — substitute your state's bar advertising rule for AZ ER 7.1–7.5 in Q3, and your state's attorney-advertising disclaimer language in Q4.

Every legal-SEO vetting framework on the SERP is written for the firm. The managing partner. The procurement committee. The chief operating officer who sends the RFP. None of them is written for the buyer this query usually surfaces — the individual attorney looking at an agency before the firm gets involved.

That attorney is in one of four positions. Solo practitioner with no partner to defer to. Equity partner tasked with bringing back a recommendation. Junior partner running pre-procurement diligence so the meeting with the senior partners is a yes-or-no decision instead of a research session. Or an attorney evaluating an agency for personal-brand work — attorney-byline content, thought leadership, AI-engine citation authority — before the firm signs anything at all.

In every one of those positions, the questions that matter are not the firm-level governance questions. They are the personal-stakes questions. Whose name ends up on the engagement letter. Whose bar number is exposed when a Rule 7.1 complaint lands. Whose attorney-byline content survives when you change firms. Whose book of business the agency can or cannot poach inside the metro. Whose conflict screens the intake data passes through. The page that helps the firm pick a vendor is not the page that helps the attorney protect themselves while doing it.

This page is that page. Twenty-two vetting questions organized into five categories, written around the individual attorney's exposure rather than the firm's. For each question we publish the answer a literate, ABA-fluent vendor produces — and the sound of a bluffing vendor that should kill the conversation. Then a separate section on personal-brand portability, the conflict-of-interest screens an attorney has to demand that a firm-level vetting checklist would miss, an honest read on the named vendors most attorneys will actually evaluate, and three anonymized AZ wins from attorneys who walked into pitches with this framework.

Use it before you bring anything back to your partners. Three or more unsatisfactory answers on the personal-stakes questions is a structural disqualification — your firm can run procurement on the rest, but those three keep you off the engagement letter.

Why an attorney-as-buyer framework reads differently

The firm's vetting checklist asks: can this vendor deliver signed cases at acceptable cost without exposing the firm to a Florida 4-7.13 violation? The attorney's vetting checklist asks: if the firm signs this vendor and something goes wrong, what does it cost me personally?

Those are different questions with different right answers.

The firm cares about aggregate signed-case volume; the attorney cares about the dispositions on their own intake — whether the agency's cases match their practice area, land in their inbox, and credit their profile rather than only the firm's.

The firm cares about ABA Rule 7.1–7.3 review before publish; the attorney cares about whether their name is on the case-result page, whether their bar admission is verifiable from the schema, whether their byline survives a firm change — or whether the agency's content-ownership clause means the page they spent eighteen months building authority on disappears the day they leave.

The firm cares about whether the agency takes competing firms; the attorney cares about whether the agency takes a competing attorney inside the firm. Single-firm-per-market doesn't protect the equity partner from the agency optimizing a junior partner's profile against theirs on the same money keyword.

The firm cares about call volume; the attorney cares about who answers after-hours when an intake call comes in for their named practice area. If the overnight line routes to a partner two doors down with the same practice area, the SEO that moves the firm's needle moves it into the wrong inbox.

If none of that has come up in the firm's vetting conversations yet, this page is the document to read before those conversations finish.

How to use this checklist

Twenty-two questions across five categories. Bar discipline exposure (Q1–Q4) — what your name on the engagement letter exposes you to under ABA Rule 7.1–7.3 and state overlay. Practice-level fit (Q5–Q9) — does the agency understand your specific practice area's intake mechanics, after-hours requirements, and ethical screens. Personal-brand and book portability (Q10–Q13) — what happens to your attorney-byline content, profile authority, and AI-engine citations if you leave. Conflict-of-interest exposure (Q14–Q17) — single-attorney-per-market commitments, intake-data handling, ethical-screen integrity. Practitioner access and accountability (Q18–Q22) — who actually does the work and whether they can defend it.

For each question we publish three things. The question itself. The answer pattern a competent, ABA-literate vendor produces. The sound of a bluffing vendor — the recognizable phrasings that should make you pause.

Pacing. Don't ask all 22 in one call. First call: qualification — bar-discipline-exposure and practice-level-fit. Second call: depth — personal-brand portability, conflicts, practitioner accountability. Solo or small-firm pre-procurement folds into one 60-minute call. At a 10+ attorney firm, run them as your prep before the firm's procurement committee gets involved.

Scoring. One unsatisfactory answer on a personal-stakes question is fixable on follow-up. Three or more is structural. The firm can still sign the vendor; you can decline to be named on the engagement letter and decline to author the attorney-byline content. That's a real option and most senior attorneys exercise it more often than the industry talks about.

Category 1 — Bar discipline exposure (Q1–Q4)

The questions where your name, not the firm's, is exposed.

Q1. Whose name appears on the engagement letter — mine, the firm's, or both?

The right answer. The firm's, with the named attorney representative listed as the practitioner-of-record for the engagement (typically the managing partner or the operating partner of the practice area). Your individual name is on internal SOPs and content review approvals, but the legal counterparty is the firm. If you're a solo practitioner, the practice entity (LLC, PC, PA) is the counterparty, with your name as the principal.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We need a personal name on the engagement letter to streamline approvals. Translation: they want a personal name on the engagement so the personal name carries the Rule 7.1–7.3 liability if something on a published page violates state advertising rules. The firm should always be the counterparty unless you are a solo principal.

We inherited recovery work for an Arizona attorney who signed personally because the agency's intake process "required it for partner authentication." When a case-result page later triggered an AZ ER 7.1 inquiry, the State Bar's first letter was addressed to her, not the firm. The inquiry resolved without discipline, but the personal-mail layer was structurally avoidable.

Q2. Walk me through your ABA Model Rule 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 review process specifically for content where my name appears

The right answer. Procedural and specific to attorney-byline content. Rule 7.1 review for any case-result figure, any 'best' or 'top' language, any implied certifications on your bio. Rule 7.2 review for the disclosure language on any page you author or are quoted on, including the attorney-advertising disclaimer in your state. Rule 7.3 review for any contact-form or chat-widget language that could constitute real-time electronic solicitation under your state's rules. Your sign-off is a documented step before publish — not after.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We follow ABA best practices and your firm's compliance team will do final review. Translation: you'll be doing the compliance review on your own bylined content, and you'll be billed for the privilege.

State-bar inquiry layer matters more for attorney-byline content than for general firm content because discipline lives with the named attorney. A Rule 7.1 violation on a homepage triggers a firm-level inquiry; a violation on a page you authored or are quoted on names you individually.

Q3. What's your state-overlay knowledge for the jurisdictions I'm admitted in?

The right answer. Specific by state, with your jurisdictions named. Arizona ER 7.1–7.5. Florida Bar Rule 4-7.13 through 4-7.22 (mandatory filing for some attorney-advertising categories, restrictive on testimonial language). New York 22 NYCRR Part 1200, Rules 7.1–7.5. California Rule of Professional Conduct 7.1–7.5 (overhauled 2018; specific provisions on dramatizations). Texas Disciplinary Rule 7.02–7.05 (filing and advance-approval requirements for certain ads). Illinois Rule 7.1–7.5. Multistate-admitted attorneys add complexity — the strictest state's rule usually controls.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We default to ABA Model Rules and adjust if a state's different. Wrong as a default and publishable evidence the vendor doesn't read state bars. Florida and California departures are material.

If you're multistate-admitted, ask the vendor to address how they handle content accessible to residents of every state where you practice — not just where the firm's office sits. Florida's rules apply to advertising directed at Florida residents regardless of home state.

Q4. What's your disclaimer-language posture — do you draft it or expect me to?

The right answer. We draft it. Every case-result page, every testimonial section, every attorney bio carries the disclaimer language we have ready for each jurisdiction. "Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome." "Attorney Advertising." "The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely upon advertisements" — the Florida-mandated phrasing where applicable. State-specific variants for the jurisdictions we ship into. You and the firm review and approve; you don't draft.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Disclaimer language is firm-counsel territory. Half-true. Your firm's general counsel signs off; the vendor still has to produce the language. Vendors who claim to specialize in attorney SEO and don't have the disclaimer template ready are bluffing the specialization.

Category 2 — Practice-level fit (Q5–Q9)

The questions where your specific practice area's mechanics — not the firm's aggregate — are exposed.

Q5. What's the CPC band for my specific practice area, and have you shipped depth in it?

The right answer. Practice-area CPCs swing 20x. Mass tort and mesothelioma $200–$500+ CPC. Personal injury $80–$300. Workers' comp $80–$150. Criminal defense $60–$200. Employment $40–$100. Bankruptcy $50–$120. Family law $40–$80. Immigration $10–$120 depending on visa type. Estate planning $25–$70. Real estate transactions $15–$50. Business litigation varies. The vendor names the band for your practice area cold, then tells you which of those bands they've shipped engagements in. We've shipped depth in PI, family, criminal defense, and estate planning; we've done partial work in immigration; we haven't shipped mass tort. That's a literate answer.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We work across all major practice areas. The aggregate claim is unfalsifiable. Ask the band; if they can't name it within 20%, the vertical depth isn't there.

Q6. How does your content plan account for the intake mechanics of my practice area?

The right answer. Different practice areas have different intake patterns. PI intake is high-urgency, short-decision-window, weighted to phone calls. Estate planning intake is low-urgency, long-decision-window, weighted to form submissions and email nurture. Criminal defense intake is highest-urgency, often after-hours, weighted to phone with a Spanish-language overlay in many metros. Family law intake is medium-urgency, emotionally weighted, often inquiry-form-first. Business litigation intake is referral-driven with content as the validation layer. A vendor that ships a generic we'll write content and convert traffic plan without addressing the intake-shape difference between your practice area and PI is using a PI template on a non-PI buyer.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Our content plan is a 12-month editorial calendar with practice-area cornerstone pieces. The calendar isn't the problem. The intake-shape acknowledgment is.

Q7. How do you handle after-hours and weekend intake for the practice areas that require it?

The right answer. The vendor knows which practice areas require it. Criminal defense and personal injury must have after-hours coverage. We track which clients route after-hours calls to dedicated answering services, to attorney mobile, to a chat widget with a 4-hour SLA. We integrate the call-tracking platform to disposition tag after-hours calls separately so we know what we're losing.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We deliver high-quality leads and your intake process converts them. That's a hands-off answer to a question where hands-on matters. We've audited PI firms losing 35–50% of their after-hours intake because the SEO worked and the intake didn't.

Q8. Will your content work credit my attorney profile, or only the firm's?

The right answer. Attorney-byline content credits your profile. Schema-marked authorship with your bar admission, jurisdiction, and education in the JSON-LD. Author archive page tied to your bio. Practice-area cornerstone pages bylined by you where you're the practice lead. Internal-link signal flows from the cornerstone to your bio, building your individual authority alongside the firm's domain authority. The firm benefits, but the authority is dual-credited.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Content is published under the firm's name to consolidate authority. That's the firm-friendly answer. It's also the answer that strips out your individual brand portability when you change firms. Push back. Most agencies can structure dual-credit on request; the ones that can't are using single-author CMS configurations they haven't bothered to redesign.

Q9. How do you handle ethical screens — both for me individually and for the firm?

The right answer. Ethical screen acknowledgment in writing. If you have prior representation that requires screening — former-client conflicts, former-government-service screens under Rule 1.11 — the vendor acknowledges the screen and structures content, intake, and reporting to not breach it. Your intake on conflicted matters is filtered before it reaches you. Your name doesn't appear on practice-area content that overlaps with screened areas.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We don't handle conflicts; that's the firm's responsibility. Half-true and useless. The firm handles conflict checking; the agency has to know the screens exist so the marketing doesn't create breaches.

Category 3 — Personal-brand and book portability (Q10–Q13)

The questions firm-level checklists never ask because the firm doesn't have skin in this game.

Q10. What happens to my attorney-byline content if I leave the firm?

The right answer. Three options, in order of attorney-friendly. (a) Content is owned by you personally — you take it. (b) Content is owned by the firm but licensed back to you for personal-brand use indefinitely. (c) Content stays with the firm but the agency provides equivalent rewrites at your new firm for a defined fee — typically the original production cost. The vendor lets you negotiate which model up front, and writes the model into the engagement letter.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Content created under the engagement is the firm's intellectual property. That's the default and the personally-disadvantageous answer. You can negotiate either of the other two options before signing. The vendor that won't engage on the question is admitting they haven't structured this before — which means they haven't worked with attorneys who asked.

Q11. Will my personal bio page be portable to a new domain if I change firms?

The right answer. Bio page content and schema markup are portable. We hand off the JSON-LD, the page content, the headshot, and the author-archive structure on request. You implement on the new domain. The AI-engine citation signal takes a quarter or two to migrate, but the migration is structurally supported, not blocked.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Bio pages are part of the firm's site architecture. Half-true; the architecture is portable. Push for the JSON-LD specifically.

Q12. What about my AI-engine citation history — does that follow me?

The right answer. Honest about the technical reality. AI engines cite the entity disambiguated by name, bar admission, jurisdiction, and education. The citation patterns lag behind the entity disambiguation by 60–180 days. If you change firms and re-establish the entity on a new domain with the same disambiguating attributes, the citation rate recovers to baseline within 90–180 days in our observation. We track the recovery for you across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. There is no formal portability mechanism inside the AI engines — recovery is structural, not transactional.

The bluffing-vendor sound. AI citations are tied to the domain; you start over. Wrong on the mechanism. Entity disambiguation drives AI citation, not domain. A vendor who says otherwise hasn't watched the recovery curve on an attorney who changed firms.

Q13. If I leave the firm and want to bring the agency relationship with me, can I?

The right answer. Yes. The engagement can transfer to a new entity (your new firm or a personal practice entity) on request. We require a 30-day transition window for the change-of-counterparty paperwork and the operational handoff. Pricing recalibrates to the new entity's scope.

The bluffing-vendor sound. The engagement is with the firm; if you leave, you start fresh. That's a transactional answer that protects the agency's recurring revenue. Press for transfer.

Category 4 — Conflict-of-interest exposure (Q14–Q17)

Where the firm-level conflict clause doesn't cover what the attorney needs.

Q14. Single-firm-per-market is the standard ask. What about single-attorney-per-practice-area-per-metro inside that firm?

The right answer. We commit single-attorney-per-practice-area-per-metro in writing when an attorney is the named buyer. That means if you're the personal-injury equity partner in Phoenix, we will not optimize a different PI partner's profile against yours on the same money keywords — internal to your firm or otherwise. The internal-firm dimension is the gap most single-firm-per-market clauses leave open.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Single-firm-per-market is our standard. That answers the firm-level question, not the attorney-level question. Push for the internal-firm dimension. A vendor who declines on this commitment is signaling they will optimize one partner's profile at the expense of another's the moment the firm asks.

Q15. How is intake data routed and stored — and who has access?

The right answer. Call recordings, form submissions, and chat transcripts are stored in a tenant the firm owns. Access is governed by the firm's user roles. The agency has reporting-level access (counts and dispositions), not content-level access (audio recordings, full transcripts) unless explicitly granted for QA. Intake data containing potentially-privileged content is segregated and not pulled into the agency's reporting tenants.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We use industry-standard intake platforms. Vague. Press for tenant ownership and access governance. The agency that hears intake recordings to which they don't have a legitimate need is the agency that breaches privilege the moment a sales-side colleague gossips about the call.

Q16. If a current intake call references a matter where I have a personal conflict, what's the disposition process?

The right answer. Intake-platform tagging includes a 'potential conflict' disposition. If the intake mentions a matter, party, or transaction where you have a screened relationship, the call is routed away from your inbox and the firm's conflict-checking process is triggered. The agency doesn't sit between you and the conflict-check decision.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We don't get involved in conflict checking. Wrong stance. The vendor's intake platform is the first point at which a potentially-conflicted matter is observed. Their workflow has to interface with the conflict-check process even if they don't run it.

Q17. If a competitor attorney at a competing firm in my metro asks you to take them on, what's your decision rule?

The right answer. No, while we're engaged with you, per the single-firm-per-market clause. The decision rule is in writing. If we decline a competitor for you, you trust the same rule is protecting your engagement when a competitor of a different practice area sees the page.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We evaluate on a case-by-case basis. That's a captivity-protecting answer. The case-by-case door is the door through which the agency walks the competitor in.

Category 5 — Practitioner access and accountability (Q18–Q22)

The team-and-access category, with attorney-specific weighting.

Q18. Who is the practitioner who will run my account, by name, and what's their authority to make decisions?

The right answer. First and last name on the engagement letter. Authority to ship content, deploy schema, optimize the GBP, and make priority-call decisions inside an agreed scope without needing to escalate. The practitioner is also the person you call on a Friday afternoon when something breaks.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Your dedicated success manager will coordinate the team running your account. That's the sales-layer interception structure. Decline.

Q19. Has the practitioner shipped engagements with attorneys at my firm's tier and my practice area before?

The right answer. Yes, with named examples (with permission). The practitioner has shipped a Phoenix PI mid-size engagement, a Tucson criminal-defense small-firm engagement, a Scottsdale estate-planning boutique engagement. The practitioner's track record, not the agency's aggregate, is the relevant signal.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Our agency has shipped dozens of legal engagements. Different question. The named practitioner's experience is the variable; the agency's aggregate isn't.

Q20. Can I reach the practitioner directly — phone, email, Slack — without going through a sales layer?

The right answer. Yes. Direct mobile and email at engagement signing. Practitioner attends every monthly call. Account manager (if any) handles scheduling and invoicing, not strategy.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Your account manager is your single point of contact to ensure consistent communication. The phrase is a sales-process artifact. Decline.

Q21. How does the practitioner handle a Google algorithm update — specifically, do I get a written incident response inside 72 hours?

The right answer. Yes. We monitor Search Central, SERoundtable, and the major algorithm-tracking commentary daily. When a confirmed update lands, we run portfolio-level rank-tracking with anomaly detection within 24 hours, and write a 1–2 page client-facing incident response inside 72 hours describing what changed, what we observed in your verticals, and what we're doing about it.

The bluffing-vendor sound. We don't chase updates; we focus on quality. The phrase is a non-answer. Updates still require an observation-and-response process even if you don't pivot strategy.

Q22. Will the practitioner read my actual case-result pages, attorney bio, and practice-area cornerstone content before publish — or is that reviewed at the QA-team level?

The right answer. Practitioner reads attorney-byline content before publish, every time. Case-result pages are practitioner-reviewed in addition to QA-team review because of the Rule 7.1 sensitivity. Your attorney bio is practitioner-reviewed and you sign off in writing on each draft.

The bluffing-vendor sound. Our QA process handles compliance review at scale. The QA team isn't an attorney. The practitioner you signed for has to read the work that carries your name on it.

The personal-brand portability clauses to demand in writing

The firm-level vetting framework has eight contract clauses (single-firm-per-market, day-one ownership, month-to-month exit, named practitioner, ABA review, published pricing, transparent reporting, itemized fees). The attorney-level vetting framework adds four more — written for the attorney specifically.

1. Attorney-byline content portability. Either ownership transfers to the named attorney on departure (preferred), the firm retains ownership with a perpetual personal-use license to the named attorney, or the agency provides equivalent rewrites at a new domain for a defined fee.
2. Personal bio and schema portability. Bio page content, JSON-LD with bar admission and education, headshot rights, and author-archive structure are exportable on request with no additional fee.
3. Single-attorney-per-practice-area-per-metro inside the firm. The agency does not optimize a competing partner's profile against the named attorney's profile on the same money keywords, internal to the firm.
4. Engagement transfer to a new entity on attorney departure. The agency engagement can transfer to a personal practice entity or a new firm on request, with a 30-day transition window and a fair recalibration of pricing.

If the agency won't put any one of these in writing, it's a data point. If they won't put two or more in writing, you decline to be named on the engagement letter even if the firm signs the vendor.

How named legal-SEO vendors handle the attorney-as-buyer questions

Observational reads on the named vendors most attorneys evaluate. Accurate as of May 2026.

LawRank. Strong on the practice-level fit questions (Q5–Q9) for PI and criminal. Less consistent on the personal-brand portability questions (Q10–Q13) — content ownership is firm-default, attorney-byline credit is available on request rather than as a standard.

Rankings.io. PI-exclusive premium. Strong on practitioner access (Q18–Q22) at the enterprise tier. The personal-brand portability questions are negotiable but not standard.

Hennessey Digital. Mid-to-enterprise PI focus. The intake-mechanics question (Q6) is a strength; the personal-brand portability questions are typically firm-friendly defaults.

Scorpion. Templated platform-plus-services. Standardized contracts mean less room to negotiate the personal-brand portability clauses unless you're at the highest tier of spend.

Consultwebs. Content-and-website orientation. Attorney-byline content is a strength operationally; the contractual portability clauses are negotiable but not standard.

Foster Web Marketing. Workers' comp and family law focus. The intake-mechanics question and the practice-area-specific content depth are strengths.

EverSpark Interactive. Atlanta-based, quiet operator. Strong on the practitioner-accountability questions (Q18–Q22).

Justia. Directory-first; SEO services are commodity-tier.

On The Map Marketing. Cross-vertical with strong legal practice. Variable on attorney-level questions depending on practitioner.

BluShark Digital. Content-heavy, PI-leaning. Attorney-byline credit generally answerable; portability clauses negotiable.

JurisDigital. Smaller, content-strong. Attorney-as-buyer questions more naturally addressed because the firm-size mix skews smaller.

Lawmatics. Primarily a CRM; marketing services aren't the strength.

Coalition Technologies. Broad cross-vertical; attorney-level questions aren't the tuning.

Three Stripes Digital. Engineering-led legal specialist. Strong on the schema-portability question (Q11).

Everest Legal Marketing. Smaller legal-specialist. Attorney-byline question is a standard offering.

Majux. Philadelphia-based legal SEO; mid-market content focus.

None of the vendors above will fail every attorney-level question. Several handle several of them well. The point of the framework is to make the questions explicit so the vendor's answers are observable rather than implicit.

How Rule27 answers each of the 22 attorney-level questions

We wrote the checklist by writing down what we already do. The structural commitments below are the ones that show up most often in attorney-as-buyer conversations.

On Q1 (engagement-letter counterparty). Firm is the legal counterparty unless the buyer is a solo principal. Named attorney is the practitioner-of-record on internal SOPs and approval workflows. We do not require personal-name signatures on engagement letters.

On Q2–Q4 (ABA review and disclaimers). Documented Rule 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 checklist runs before publish on every attorney-byline page. State overlay applied per jurisdictions the named attorney is admitted in. Disclaimer language drafted by us — Prior results, Attorney Advertising, Florida-mandated phrasing where applicable. Attorney sign-off documented before publish.

On Q5–Q9 (practice-level fit). Practice-area CPC bands named on the first call. Intake-mechanics acknowledgment as a content-plan input. After-hours intake disposition tagging in the call-tracking platform. Attorney-profile credit on cornerstone content via dual-credit schema. Ethical-screen acknowledgment as a content-and-intake input, not a post-hoc fix.

On Q10–Q13 (personal-brand portability). Three content-ownership options on the table at engagement start — attorney-owned, firm-owned-with-license, firm-owned-with-rewrite-clause. Bio page and JSON-LD portable on request. AI-engine citation recovery curve tracked across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini. Engagement transferable to a new entity with a 30-day transition window.

On Q14–Q17 (conflicts). Single-attorney-per-practice-area-per-metro committed in writing when an attorney is the named buyer. Intake data stored in a firm-owned tenant with role-based access. Conflict-disposition tagging in the intake platform. Single-firm-per-market clause not subject to case-by-case exceptions.

On Q18–Q22 (practitioner access). Named practitioner on every engagement letter. Practitioner has 6–10 accounts maximum, attorney-buyer engagements often weighted lower. Direct mobile, email, and Slack access. Practitioner attends every monthly call. Practitioner reads attorney-byline content before publish, every time.

The full answer set with sample contract language is in the magnet at the top of this page — 22 questions, Rule27's answer pattern beside each, plus the four personal-brand portability clauses written into sample engagement-letter language.

Three anonymized AZ attorneys who used this framework

Phoenix personal injury equity partner, mid-size firm, four practice areas. Tasked by partnership with bringing back a vendor recommendation. Ran 14 of the 22 questions on the first call and the rest on the second across four vendors. Two vendors couldn't answer Q14 (single-attorney-per-practice-area-per-metro inside the firm) and were eliminated. One vendor refused to put Q10 (content portability) into writing. Signed Rule27 month one. Outcome at 9 months: signed-case lift +218% on the named attorney's intake disposition, AI Overview citations for the attorney's name on 6 of 8 money keywords, attorney-byline content portfolio of 24 pages bylined and schema-credited to the named attorney. Retainer at the firm level $5K/month.

Scottsdale estate planning solo practitioner, recently spun off from a regional firm. Personal name on the engagement letter (solo principal context). Ran the framework against three vendors before signing. Personal-brand portability questions (Q10–Q13) were the deciding category — the prior firm retained content ownership on departure and the new engagement had to rebuild authority from scratch. Rule27 contracted for personal ownership of all new content and full schema migration support if a future firm change occurred. Outcome at 12 months: $1.8M in attributed new revenue, AI Overview citations on 5 of the top 7 estate-planning queries in Maricopa County, retainer $4K/month.

Tucson criminal defense junior partner, three-attorney boutique. Tasked by managing partner with running pre-procurement diligence on five vendors. Three eliminated on the bar-discipline-exposure questions (Q1–Q4) — one vendor required a personal-name signature on the engagement letter, two had no documented Rule 7.1 review process for attorney-byline content. Of the surviving two, Rule27 was signed on the second-call walkthrough of personal-brand portability and conflict-of-interest categories. Outcome at 9 months: signed-case lift +143%, after-hours intake disposition fix reduced lost-after-hours rate from 38% to 9%, retainer $3.5K/month.

All three attorneys provided written case-study release language we hold on file. Practice area, metro, and attorney count are anonymized per AZ ER 7.1–7.5 disclosure conventions.

FAQ

Answers to the seven questions that come up most often after an attorney reads this framework.

What's next

If you're still pre-procurement, download the PDF version of this checklist at the top of the page. Bring it to every discovery call you're running on behalf of the firm — or that you're running personally if you're solo or running parallel to the firm's procurement.

If you want Rule27 to run the same diligence on your situation — the firm's site, your individual bio page, the schema posture on your attorney-byline content, the AI Overview presence of your name versus your firm's name, and the three nearest competing attorneys in your practice area inside your metro — the free pre-engagement audit at the bottom of this page is the fastest path. 48-hour turnaround. We deliver it whether you hire us or not.

And if you want a 30-minute call with the practitioner who would actually run the work — not a salesperson — book it from the link below. Same-day scheduling when our calendar allows.